Pierce County Library

Books/Materials

Overview

Read "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" by award-winning author Jamie Ford, during Pierce County Library System and The News Tribune’s fifth annual community one book program: Pierce County READS, sponsored by KeyBank Foundation and Pierce County Library Foundation.

Community involvement

Be a part of the biggest community reading event in the county.

Pierce County READS is a community involvement program where everybody in one place, at one time, reads, talks about, shares and enjoys the same book.

Community partners

More than 20 community partners participate in Pierce County READS.

A total of 17 cities and towns and Pierce County Council are issuing proclamations declaring "Pierce County READS 2012." Those cities and towns include the Cities of Bonney Lake, Buckley, DuPont, Edgewood, Fife, Gig Harbor, Lakewood, Milton, Orting, Puyallup, Roy, Sumner and University Place, and the Towns of Eatonville, South Prairie, Steilacoom and Wilkeson.

Author event

Pierce County READS concludes with the author giving a free presentation and book signing.

Videos

"Hotel on the Corner Of Bitter and Sweet" - Locations
Author Jamie Ford narrates a tour of the Seattle neighborhood where Japanese residents' lives were disrupted at the start of World War II, the subject of his moving novel.

"Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" - Stories
Jamie Ford introduces his novel, filled with heartwarming stories of fathers and sons, first loves, fate, and the resilient human heart.

Pierce County TV: March 1-7, 2012
Pierce County READS | Windows Media | MP4

Locations

Panama Hotel
According to tours currently given at the Panama Hotel, 37 Japanese families stored their belongings at the Panama Hotel and those items are still housed at the hotel today. Visit the hotel and the neighborhood in the Bitter and Sweet Tour given by the Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience.

Minidoka Detention Camp
The Idaho camp opened Aug. 10, 1942, and closed Oct. 28, 1945. Peak population was 9,397 internees from Seattle, Pierce County, Portland and Northwestern Oregon. 73 Minidoka prisoners died in military service.

During the war, the 100th Battalion/442nd Regimental Combat Team of the U.S. Army, an all Japanese American unit, became the most decorated unit of its size in American military history, with the greatest number of volunteers coming from the Minidoka Center.

Records indicate the Bainbridge Island internees left on February 24, 1943 for the Minidoka War Relocation Center, where most remained until the end of the war.

Detention and internment camps, including Minidoka: http://www.momomedia.com/CLPEF/camps.html
Incarceration sites of Bainbridge Island internees: http://www.nps.gov/miin/historyculture/nidoto-nai-yoni-memorial.htm
Minidoka National Historic Site: http://www.nps.gov/hafo/public-comment-documents.htm

More information

After Internment: Seattle’s Debate Over Japanese Americans' Right to Return Home
Heart Mountain Relocation Center
Japanese American Exhibit and Access Project - University of Washington Libraries projects related to the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.
Japanese Internment Camp Photographs
Manzanar War Relocation Center
Tule Lake Internment Camp
Wing Luke Museum of the Asian Pacific American Experience - Smithsonian Affiliate, a partnership with the Smithsonian Institution. America's only museum devoted to the Asian Pacific American experience, dedicated to immersing people in uniquely-American stories of survival, success, struggle, conflict, compassion and hope. The Bitter and Sweet Tour highlights 40 Chinatown-International District locations featured in "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" Visit the neighborhood and stops the characters frequented.

Pierce County Library SystemInformation & Imagination